Recipes with vanilla extract

Low-fat barley kugel studded with cinnamon apples and plump raisins. This lighter twist on a Jewish comfort classic swaps butter for yogurt yet still delivers that creamy, custardy bite.

No-bake oatmeal cookies with cocoa, peanut butter, and chopped nuts dropped onto wax paper. Ready in 20 minutes with zero oven time. Makes two dozen chewy chocolate cookies.

Moist spice cake made with apricot baby food and puréed canned apricots, topped with boiled brown sugar icing.

Hyde Park fudge cake is a rich chocolate Bundt made with unsweetened chocolate, sour milk, and a glossy double-boiler chocolate icing. An old-fashioned classic.

A moist chocolate date cake baked in an 8-inch square pan with chocolate chips in the batter and a crunchy chip-nut-sugar topping. Dates softened in boiling water keep it impossibly tender. The kind of no-fuss cake you carry straight to the picnic in the pan.

Creamy homemade cornstarch pudding from scratch with butter and vanilla. Includes variations for chocolate, banana, and butterscotch pudding. One base recipe, four desserts.

Old-fashioned chocolate butterscotch fudge cooked to soft ball stage with sweetened condensed milk, crunchy walnuts, and a toffee-like richness you won't find in shortcut recipes.

Self-saucing sticky toffee pudding, a date-studded muscovado sponge that creates its own rich toffee sauce underneath as it bakes. Spoon it warm over vanilla ice cream or pouring cream.

Orange sugar-crusted meltaway cookies with chocolate chips and chopped nuts, dipped in fresh orange juice and rolled in sugar to form a delicate citrus-sugar shell. A bright, buttery shortbread-style holiday cookie.

Turtle swirl cheesecake on a chocolate wafer crust with semi-sweet chocolate ribbons, butterscotch drizzle, and toasted pecans. Marbled, dense, and unapologetically rich.

Brown sugar blondies loaded with butterscotch chips and chopped nuts. No cocoa, all caramel and vanilla. The butterscotch cousin to classic chocolate brownies.

Tender sour cream sheet cake with black walnut flavoring, topped with a quick-cook caramel frosting loaded with chopped nuts. One pan, one hour, and a frosting that comes together on the stovetop.

This is one of those "ooooof!" cakes. Between the chocolate ganache and the chocolate mousse filling you might break out in some butter sweats, but it is very worth it. The cake is fluffy and moist, the mousse cool and airy, and the ganache smooth and creamy. A great show off cake for special occasions. Best of all, really easy to make!

Sliced apples layered with cinnamon sugar get topped with a simple cake batter that bakes into a tender crust for an effortless dessert that's halfway between apple crisp and cake.

Banana chocolate marble cake swirls melted semi-sweet chocolate into a moist sour cream banana batter, finished with a glossy orange-scented chocolate ganache.

English tea cake with maraschino cherries and white raisins baked low and slow in a tube pan. A buttery, dense pound cake-style treat with pockets of fruit in every slice.